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  • Anthropology.net notes a remarkably thorough genetic analysis of a piece of chewing gum 5700 years old that reveals volumes of data about the girl who chew it.

  • 'Nathan Burgoine at Apostrophen writes an amazing review of Cats that actually does make me want to see it.

  • Bad Astronomy reports on galaxy NGC 6240, a galaxy produced by a collision with three supermassive black holes.

  • Caitlin Kelly at the Broadside Blog writes about the mechanics of journalism.

  • Centauri Dreams argues that the question of whether humans will walk on exoplanets is ultimately distracting to the study of these worlds.

  • Crooked Timber shares a Sunday morning photo of Bristol.

  • The Dragon's Tales notes that India has a launch date of December 2021 for its first mission in its Gaganyaan crewed space program.

  • Andrew LePage at Drew Ex Machina looks at the Saturn C-1 rocket.

  • Karen Sternheimer at the Everyday Sociology Blog considers if the vogue for minimalism meets the criteria to be considered a social movement.

  • Far Outliers ?notes how, in the War of 1812, some in New England considered the possibility of seceding from the Union.

  • Gizmodo looks at evidence of the last populations known of Homo erectus, on Java just over a hundred thousand years ago.

  • Mark Graham links to a new paper co-authored by him looking at how African workers deal with the gig economy.

  • io9 announces that the Michael Chabon novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, is set to become a television series.

  • Joe. My. God. shares a report that Putin gave Trump anti-Ukrainian conspiracy theories.

  • JSTOR Daily considers what a world with an economy no longer structured around oil could look like.

  • Language Hat takes issue with the latest talk of the Icelandic language facing extinction.

  • Language Log shares a multilingual sign photographed in Philadelphia's Chinatown.

  • Paul Campos at Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the document release revealing the futility of the war in Afghanistan.

  • The LRB Blog looks at class identity and mass movements and social democracy.

  • Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution suggests that, even if the economy of China is larger than the United States, Chinese per capita poverty means China does not have the leading economy.

  • Diane Duane at Out of Ambit writes about how she is writing a gay sex scene.

  • Jim Belshaw at Personal Reflections reflects on "OK Boomer".

  • Roads and Kingdoms interviews Mexican chef Ruffo Ibarra.

  • Peter Rukavina shares his list of levees for New Year's Day 2020 on PEI.

  • The Russian Demographics Blog shares a map indicating fertility rates in the different regions of the European Union.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel explains how quantum physics are responsible for vast cosmic structures.

  • Charles Soule at Whatever explains his reasoning behind his new body-swap novel.

  • Window on Eurasia notes how the negotiations between Russia and Ukraine in Paris show the lack of meaningful pro-Russian sentiment there.

  • Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell talks about his lessons from working in the recent British election.

  • Arnold Zwicky looks at a syncretic, Jewish-Jedi, holiday poster.

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  • Charlie Stross at Antipope shares an essay he recently presented on artificial intelligence and its challenges for us.

  • P. Kerim Friedman writes at {anthro}dendum about the birth of the tea ceremony in the Taiwan of the 1970s.

  • Anthropology net reports on a cave painting nearly 44 thousand years old in Indonesia depicting a hunting story.

  • Architectuul looks at some temporary community gardens in London.

  • Bad Astronomy reports on the weird history of asteroid Ryugu.

  • The Buzz talks about the most popular titles borrowed from the Toronto Public Library in 2019.

  • Caitlin Kelly talks at the Broadside Blog about her particular love of radio.

  • Centauri Dreams talks about the role of amateur astronomers in searching for exoplanets, starting with LHS 1140 b.

  • John Quiggin at Crooked Timber looks at what is behind the rhetoric of "virtue signalling".

  • Dangerous Minds shares concert performance from Nirvana filmed the night before the release of Nevermind.

  • Bruce Dorminey notes new evidence that, even before the Chixculub impact, the late Cretaceous Earth was staggering under environmental pressures.

  • Myron Strong at the Everyday Sociology Blog writes about how people of African descent in the US deal with the legacies of slavery in higher education.

  • Far Outliers reports on the plans in 1945 for an invasion of Japan by the US.

  • L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing gathers together a collection of the author's best writings there.

  • Gizmodo notes the immensity of the supermassive black hole, some 40 billion solar masses, at the heart of galaxy Holm 15A 700 million light-years away.

  • Russell Arben Fox at In Media Res writes about the issue of how Wichita is to organize its civic politics.

  • io9 argues that the 2010s were a decade where the culture of the spoiler became key.

  • The Island Review points readers to the podcast Mother's Blood, Sister's Songs, an exploration of the links between Ireland and Iceland.

  • Joe. My. God. reports on the claim of the lawyer of the killer of a mob boss that the QAnon conspiracy inspired his actions. This strikes me as terribly dangerous.

  • JSTOR Daily looks at a study examining scholarly retractions.

  • Language Hat shares an amusing cartoon illustrating the relationships of the dialects of Arabic.

  • Language Log lists ten top new words in the Japanese language.

  • Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at the dissipation of American diplomacy by Trump.

  • The LRB Blog looks at the many problems in Sparta, Greece, with accommodating refugees, for everyone concerned.

  • Marginal Revolution links to a paper suggesting the decline of the one-child policy in China has diminished child trafficking, among other crimes.

  • Sean Marshall, looking at transit in Brampton, argues that transit users need more protection from road traffic.

  • Russell Darnley shares excerpts from essays he wrote about the involvement of Australia in the Vietnam War.

  • Peter Watts talks about his recent visit to a con in Sofia, Bulgaria, and about the apocalypse, here.

  • The NYR Daily looks at the corporatization of the funeral industry, here.

  • Diane Duane writes, from her own personal history with Star Trek, about how one can be a writer who ends up writing for a media franchise.

  • Jim Belshaw at Personal Reflections considers the job of tasting, and rating, different cuts of lamb.

  • The Planetary Society Blog looks at a nondescript observatory in the Mojave desert of California that maps the asteroids of the solar system.

  • Roads and Kingdoms interviews Eduardo Chavarin about, among other things, Tijuana.

  • Drew Rowsome loves the SpongeBob musical.

  • Peter Rukavina announces that Charlottetown has its first public fast charger for electric vehicles.

  • The Russian Demographics Blog considers the impact of space medicine, here.

  • The Signal reports on how the Library of Congress is making its internet archives more readily available, here.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel considers how the incredibly isolated galaxy MCG+01-02-015 will decay almost to nothing over almost uncountable eons.

  • Strange Company reports on the trial and execution of Christopher Slaughterford for murder. Was there even a crime?

  • Strange Maps shares a Coudenhove-Kalergi map imagining the division of the world into five superstates.

  • Understanding Society considers entertainment as a valuable thing, here.

  • Denis Colombi at Une heure de peine announces his new book, Où va l'argent des pauvres?

  • John Scalzi at Whatever looks at how some mailed bread triggered a security alert, here.

  • Window on Eurasia reports on the massive amount of remittances sent to Tajikistan by migrant workers, here.

  • Arnold Zwicky notes a bizarre no-penguins sign for sale on Amazon.

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  • The town of Innisfil is looking forward to some very futuristic developments. Global News reports.

  • Jeremy Deaton at CityLab reports on how, buffered by the Great Lakes, Buffalo NY may end gaining from climate change.

  • The Ottawa chain Bridgehead Coffee has been sold to national chain Second Cup. Global News reports.

  • Many of the more eye-raising installations in the Gay Village of Montréal have since been removed. CTV News reports.

  • Warming huts for homeless people in Winnipeg were torn down because the builders did not follow procedures. Global News reports.

  • Open Democracy looks at innovative new public governance of the city budget in Amsterdam, here.

  • Singapore, located in a well-positioned Southeast Asia and with working government, may take over from Hong Kong. Bloomberg View makes the case.

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  • Architectuul looks at the Portuguese architectural cooperative Ateliermob, here.

  • Bad Astronomer Phil Plait looks at how white dwarf WD J091405.30+191412.25 is literally vapourizing a planet in close orbit.

  • Caitlin Kelly at the Broadside Blog explains
  • Centauri Dreams looks at the slowing of the solar wind far from the Sun.

  • John Holbo at Crooked Timber considers the gap between ideals and actuals in the context of conspiracies and politics.

  • The Dragon's Tales reports on how the ESA is trying to solve a problem with the parachutes of the ExoMars probe.

  • Far Outliers reports on what Harry Truman thought about politicians.

  • Gizmodo reports on a new method for identifying potential Earth-like worlds.

  • io9 pays tribute to legendary writer, of Star Trek and much else, D.C. Fontana.

  • The Island Review reports on the football team of the Chagos Islands.

  • Joe. My. God. reports that gay Olympian Gus Kenworthy will compete for the United Kingdom in 2020.

  • JSTOR Daily looks at how early English imperialists saw America and empire through the lens of Ireland.

  • Paul Campos at Lawyers, Guns and Money does not like Pete Buttigieg.

  • The LRB Blog looks at the London Bridge terrorist attack.

  • The Map Room Blog shares a map of Prince William Sound, in Alaska, that is already out of date because of global warming.

  • Marginal Revolution questions if Cuba, in the Philippines, is the most typical city in the world.

  • The NYR Daily looks at gun violence among Arab Israelis.

  • The Planetary Society Blog considers what needs to be researched next on Mars.

  • Roads and Kingdoms tells the story of Sister Gracy, a Salesian nun at work in South Sudan.

  • The Russian Demographics Blog shares a paper noting continued population growth expected in much of Europe, and the impact of this growth on the environment.

  • Strange Maps shares a map of fried chicken restaurants in London.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel explains why a 70 solar mass black hole is not unexpected.

  • John Scalzi at Whatever gives his further thoughts on the Pixel 4.

  • Window on Eurasia notes that, last year, 37 thousand Russians died of HIV/AIDS.

  • Arnold Zwicky starts from a consideration of the 1948 film Kind Hearts and Coronets.

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  • Bad Astronomer notes the circumstances of the discovery of a low-mass black hole, only 3.3 solar masses.

  • Crooked Timber shares a photo of the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul.

  • The Crux looks at Monte Verde, the site in Chile that has the evidence of the oldest human population known to have lived in South America.

  • The Dragon's Tales notes that Russia may provide India with help in the design of its Gaganyaan manned capsule.

  • L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing talks of his work, including his upcoming conference and his newsletter, The Convivial Society. (Subscribe at the website.)

  • Gizmodo shares the Voyager 2 report from the edges of interstellar space.

  • JSTOR Daily looks at the East India Company and its corporate lobbying.

  • Language Hat shares an account from Ken Liu of the challenges in translating The Three Body Problem, linguistic and otherwise.

  • Language Log looks at the problems faced by the word "liberation" in Hong Kong.

  • Dan Nexon at Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at the implications of the surprising new relationship between Russia and the Philippines.

  • Marginal Revolution seems to like Terminator: Dark Fate, as a revisiting of the series' origins, with a Mesoamerican twist.

  • Sean Marshall announces his attendance at a transit summit in Guelph on Saturday the 9th.

  • Garry Wills writes at the NYR Daily about his experience as a man in the mid-20th century American higher education looking at the rise of women.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel looks at the strangely faint distant young galaxy MACS2129-1.

  • Window on Eurasia considers the possibility of Latvia developing a national Eastern Orthodox church of its own.

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  • Adam Fish at anthro{dendum} compares different sorts of public bathing around the world, from Native America to Norden to Japan.

  • Charlie Stross at Antipope is unimpressed by the person writing the script for our timeline.

  • Architectuul reports on an architectural conference in Lisbon.

  • Bad Astronomer Phil Plait shares stunning photos of the eruption of the Raikoke volcano in Kamchatka.

  • Centauri Dreams looks at what the Voyager spacecraft have returned about the edge of the solar system.

  • John Quiggin at Crooked Timber takes issue with the idea of bipartisanship if it means compromising on reality, allegorically.

  • The Crux counts the number of people who have died in outer space.

  • D-Brief notes that the Andromeda Galaxy has swallowed up multiple dwarf galaxies over the eons.

  • Dead Things notes the identification of the first raptor species from Southeast Asia, Siamraptor suwati.

  • The Dragon's Tales notes a paper tracing the origins of interstellar comet 2/Borisov from the general area of Kruger 60.

  • Karen Sternheimer at the Everyday Sociology Blog writes about the privilege allowing people access to affordable dental care.

  • Gizmodo tells how Alexei Leonov survived the first spacewalk.

  • io9 looks at the remarkable new status quo for the X-Men created by Jonathan Hickman.

  • Selma Franssen at the Island Review writes about the threats facing the seabirds of the Shetlands.

  • JSTOR Daily looks at what led Richard Nixon to make so many breaks from the American consensus on China in the Cold War.

  • Language Log notes an undergraduate course at Yale using the Voynich Manuscript as an aid in the study of language.

  • Abigail Nussbaum at Lawyers, Guns and Money explains her recent experience of the socialized health care system of Israel for Americans.

  • The LRB Blog looks at how badly the Fukuyama prediction of an end to history has aged.

  • The Map Room Blog shares a few maps of the new Ottawa LRT route.

  • Marginal Revolution notes a paper establishing a link between Chinese industries undermining their counterparts in Mexico and Mexican social ills including crime.

  • Sean Marshall reports from Ottawa about what the Confederation Line looks like.

  • Adam Shatz at the NYR Daily looks at the power of improvisation in music.

  • Roads and Kingdoms looks at South Williamsburg Jewish deli Gottlieb's.

  • Drew Rowsome reviews the new Patti Smith book, Year of the Monkey.

  • The Russian Demographics Blog shares a paper looking as the factors leading into transnational movements.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel considers the question of the direction(s) in which order in the universe was generated.

  • Window on Eurasia shares a report noting the very minor flows of migration from China to Russia.

  • Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell looks at the politics in the British riding of Keighley.

  • Arnold Zwicky looks at some penguin socks.

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  • Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait shares a video of the expansion of supernova remnant Cas A.

  • James Bow shares an alternate history Toronto transit map from his new novel The Night Girl.

  • Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber notes the Boris Johnson coup.

  • The Crux notes a flawed study claiming that some plants had a recognizable intelligence.

  • D-Brief notes the mysterious absorbers in the clouds of Venus. Are they life?

  • Dangerous Minds shares, apropos of nothing, the Jah Wabbles song "A Very British Coup."

  • Cody Delistraty looks at bullfighting.

  • Dead Things notes the discovery of stone tools sixteen thousand years old in Idaho which are evidence of the first humans in the Americas.

  • io9 features an interview with authors Charlie Jane Anders and Annalee Newitz on worldbuilding.

  • Joe. My. God. notes that a bill in Thailand to establish civil unions is nearing approval.

  • JSTOR Daily looks at how using plastic in road construction can reduce pollution in oceans.

  • Language Log looks to see if some police in Hong Kong are speaking Cantonese or Putonghua.

  • Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the perplexing ramblings and--generously--inaccuracy of Joe Biden.

  • The LRB Blog asks why the United Kingdom is involved in the Yemen war, with Saudi Arabia.

  • The Map Room Blog looks at the different efforts aiming to map the fires of Amazonia.

  • Marginal Revolution reports on how some southern US communities, perhaps because they lack other sources of income, depend heavily on fines.

  • The NYR Daily looks at the complex literary career of Louisa May Alcott, writing for all sorts of markets.

  • Window on Eurasia reports on the apparently sincere belief of Stalin, based on new documents, that in 1934 he faced a threat from the Soviet army.

  • Arnold Zwicky takes a look at fixings, or fixins, as the case may be.

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  • The flood-damaged community of Sainte-Marie, in the Beauce south of Québec City, may not recover from necessary demolitions of damaged and dangerous structures. CBC reports.

  • Erecting a barrier at an apparently suicide-attracting bridge like the Reversing Falls Bridge in Saint John makes perfect sense to me. Global News has it.

  • Lawyers, Guns and Money notes that, happily, voters in Phoenix have voted again in support of a light rail mass transit project.

  • Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution notes that the department of Paris has continued to lose population, contrary to the experience of growth elsewhere in other similar world cities.

  • CityLab makes the case for Changi Airport, in Singapore, as a world-class attraction in its own right.

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  • Bad Astronomer Phil Plait shares images of galaxy M61.

  • Centauri Dreams looks at a proposal for the Solar Cruiser probe, a NASA probe that would use a solar sail.

  • D-Brief notes the discovery of bacteria on coasts which manufacture dimethyl sulfide.

  • Bruce Dorminey writes about some facts about the NASA X-15 rocket plane.

  • The Dragon's Tales reports on the strange nuclear accident in Nyonoksa, Russia.

  • JSTOR Daily reports on the recent uncovering of the ancient Egyptian city of Heracleion, under the Mediterranean.

  • Language Hat looks at 19th century standards on ancient Greek language.

  • Language Log notes an ironically swapped newspaper article subhead.

  • Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at the role of Tom Cotton in the recent Greenland scandal.

  • Marginal Revolution glances at the relationship between China and Singapore.

  • The NYR Daily looks at how the car ride played a role in the writing of Jacques Lacan.

  • The Russian Demographics Blog shares an index on state fragility around the world.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel explains why Jupiter suffers so many impacts from incoming bodies.

  • John Scalzi at Whatever reports on what seems to have been an enjoyable concert experience with Iron Maiden.

  • Window on Eurasia reports a claim that, with regards to a border dispute, Chechnya is much more unified than Dagestan.

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  • Tensions between the LGBTQ communities of Hamilton and the police remain high. Global News reports.

  • The federal government will be providing funding for the new Great West Park of Montréal. CTV News reports.

  • CityLab looks at the hometown of Toni Morrison, the Ohio community of Lorain, here.

  • Guardian Cities looks at the question of how, or whether, a Buenos Aires slum should become an official neighbourhood, here.

  • Guardian Cities reports on a small neighbourhood, Cosmo Park, built on top of a shopping mall in Jakarta, here.

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  • Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes the Elon Musk proposal to terraform Mars by dropping nuclear weapons on the planet's ice caps is a bad idea.

  • James Bow writes about how the introduction of faeries saved his novel The Night Girl.

  • Centauri Dreams looks at the storms of Jupiter.

  • The Crux explains the mystery of a village in Poland that has not seen the birth of a baby boy for nearly a decade.

  • D-Brief looks at the exoplanets of nearby red dwarf Gliese 1061.

  • Cody Delisraty talks of Renaissance painter Fra Angelico.

  • Drew Ex Machina commemorates the 30th anniversary of the Voyager 2 flyby of Neptune.

  • The Dragon's Tales shares links to some papers about the Paleolithic.


  • JSTOR Daily hosts an essay by Viktor Mayer-Schönberger suggesting that Internet rot might be good since it could let people start to forget the past and so move on.

  • Language Hat questions whether the phrase "free to all" has really fallen out of use.

  • Language Log takes a look about immigration to the United States and Emma Lazarus' famous poem.

  • Dan Nexon at Lawyers, Guns and Money takes issue with the suggestion of, among other, Henry Farrell, that we are headed away from globalization towards fortress economies. Redundancy, he suggests, will be more important.

  • Marginal Revolution links to a disturbing paper suggesting users of opioids use them in part for social reasons.

  • The NYR Daily features an exchange on a new law in Singapore seeking to govern fake news.

  • The Power and the Money features a guest post from Leticia Arroyo Abad looking at Argentina before the elections.

  • Drew Rowsome takes a look at a new play by Raymond Helkio examining the life of out boxer Mark Leduc.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel considers if we can test gravitational waves for wave-particle duality.

  • Arnold Zwicky shares photos of the many flowers of Gamble Garden, in Palo Alto.

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  • Centauri Dreams reports on how dataset mining of K2 data revealed 18 more Earth-sized planets.

  • Crooked Timber speculates on how Clarence Thomas might rule on abortion given his public rulings.

  • D-Brief observes that some corals in Hawaii appear to thrive in acidic waters. Is there hope yet for coral reefs?

  • Karen Sternheimer writes at the Everyday Sociology Blog about how sociology and history overlap, in their subjects and in their methods.

  • Far Outliers examines how the last remnants of Soviet power faded quickly around the world in 1991.

  • Gizmodo looks at how an image of a rare albino panda has just been captured.

  • Joe. My. God. notes how Christian fundamentalists want to make the east of Washington State into a 51st state run by Biblical law.

  • JSTOR Daily notes how trees can minimize algae blooms in nearby water systems.

  • Victor Mair at Language Log takes issue with problematic pop psychology regarding bilingualism in Singapore.

  • Lawyers, Guns, and Money takes issue with trying to minimize court decisions like (for instance) a hypothetical overthrow of Miranda v. Arizona. (Roe v. Wade is what they are concerned with.)

  • The NYR Daily looks at the short storied life of avant-garde filmmaker Barbara Rubin.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel explains why we can never learn everything about our universe.

  • Towleroad notes that downloads of the relationship app Hinge have surged after Pete Buttigieg said he met his now-husband there.

  • Window on Eurasia notes that Ukraine is seeking to have the Kerch Strait separating Crimea from adjacent Russia declared an international body of water.

  • Arnold Zwicky takes a look at what famed gay writer John Rechy is doing these days.

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  • Bad Astronomy identifies the most distant globular cluster known to exist around the Milky Way Galaxy, PSO J174.0675-10.8774 some 470 thousand light-years away.

  • Centauri Dreams looks at the strange ring of the Kuiper Belt dwarf planet Haumea.

  • Crooked Timber looks at an ill-constructed biography of Eric Hobsbawm.

  • D-Brief notes an experiment that proves antimatter obeys the same laws of quantum mechanics as regular matter, at least insofar as the double-slit experiment is concerned.

  • Earther notes that life in Antarctica depends critically on the presence of penguin feces.

  • Imageo looks at awesome satellite imagery of spring storms in North America.

  • The Island Review interviews Irene de la Torre, a translator born on the Spanish island of Mallorca, about her experiences and thoughts on her insular experiences.

  • Joe. My. God. notes a new deal between Gilead Pharmaceuticals and the American government to make low-cost PrEP available to two hundred thousand people.

  • JSTOR Daily looks at the many ways in which The Great Gatsby reflects the norms of the Jazz Age.

  • Paul Campos at Lawyers, Guns and Money is rightly critical of the Sam Harris suggestion that white supremacism is not an ideology of special concern, being only a fringe belief.

  • Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution solicits questions for an upcoming interview with demographer of religion Eric Kaufmann.

  • Russell Darnley at Maximos62 shares cute video of otters frolicking on the Singapore River.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel asks when the universe became transparent to light.

  • Arnold Zwicky shares photos of his blooming flower gardens.

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  • NOW Toronto profiles some eye-catching exhibits part of the Contact Photography Festival.

  • Toronto Life profiles some recently recovered photos by Christopher Porter dating from the 1990s.

  • The NYR Daily took a look at the war-themed photographs of Don McCullin, here.

  • The NYR Daily examines the work of Antanas Sutkus, who began his work in Soviet Lithuania.

  • These images of the legacies of the Vietnam War in Laos, decades later, are stunning. VICE has them.

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  • Missisauga's mayor Bonnie Crombie makes the case for her city's independence from Peel Region, over at the Toronto Star.

  • CityLab features a Richard Florida interview with sociologist Alejandro Portes on his new book examining the history and future of Miami.

  • New maps showing flood risks are available to municipalities in the Montréal region, but for various reasons they are not using them yet. CBC reports.

  • Guardian Cities reports on how the new president of Indonesia wants to move the country's capital away from megacity Jakarta to a new location on the island of Borneo.

  • CityLab reports on how the Swiss city of Lausanne is making use of innovative new community consultations to decide how to manage its Place de la Riponne.

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  • This story about a genealogical mystery newly-found in the genetics of Newfoundland is fascinating. The National Post reports.

  • The island of Komodo has been closed to tourists to save the Komodo dragons from poachers. VICE reports.

  • China plans to build a city under its control among the islets of the South China Sea. Business Insider reports.

  • The Inter Press Service notes the spread of leprosy in Kiribati.

  • JSTOR Daily explains why, for one week, the Faroe Islands are closed to tourists to better enable cleaning and repairs.

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  • D-Brief notes the discovery of a fossil of a four-limbed whale in Peru, dating 42.5 million years.

  • D-Brief looks at how the bacterium Enterococcus faecalis morphed from normal gut bacteria to potentially fatal hospital-borne infection.

  • D-Brief notes a proposal to build offshore platforms as habitat for fish and for birds.

  • D-Brief notes how the Falcon Heavy is proving itself a vanguard of progress in spaceflight.

  • D-Brief notes new evidence of there having been multiple regional populations of Denisovans, drawing from work in Indonesia.

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  • Charlie Stross hosts at Antipope another discussion thread examining Brexit.

  • Architectuul takes a look at five overlooked mid-20th century architects.

  • Bad Astronomy shares a satellite photo of auroras at night over the city lights of the Great Lakes basin and something else, too.

  • The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly writes about the directions love has taken her, and wonders where it might have taken her readers.

  • Centauri Dreams reports on the Hayabusa 2 impactor on asteroid Ryugu.

  • John Quiggin at Crooked Timber takes issue with the claims of Steven Pinker about nuclear power.

  • D-Brief notes the detection, in remarkable detail, of a brilliant exocomet at Beta Pictoris.

  • The Dragon's Tales considers the possibility that China might be building a military base in Cambodia.

  • Karen Sternheimer writes at the Everyday Sociology Blog about the importance of small social cues, easily overlookable tough they are.

  • Far Outliers notes the role of Japan's imperial couple, Akihito and Michiko, in post-war Japan.

  • L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing writes about the potential inadequacy of talking about values.

  • Gizmodo notes a new study suggesting the surprising and potentially dangerous diversity of bacteria present on the International Space Station.

  • Mark Graham shares a link to a paper, and its abstract, examining what might come of the creation of a planetary labour market through the gig economy.

  • Hornet Stories takes a look at Red Ribbon Blues, a 1995 AIDS-themed film starring RuPaul.

  • io9 notes that Guillermo del Toro and Cornelia Funke are co-writing a Pan's Labyrinth novel scheduled for release later this year.

  • Joe. My. God. notes a new study suggesting 20% of LGBTQ Americans live in rural areas.

  • JSTOR Daily takes a look at the Bluestockings, the grouping of 18th century women in England who were noteworthy scholars and writers.

  • Language Hat notes an ambitious new historical dictionary of the Arabic language being created by the emirate of Sharjah.

  • Language Log examines, in the aftermath of a discussion of trolls, different cultures' terms for different sorts of arguments.

  • Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money notes how early forestry in the United States was inspired by socialist ideals.

  • The Map Room Blog links to a map showing the different national parks of the United Kingdom.

  • Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution, noting the new findings from the Chixculub impact, notes how monitoring asteroids to prevent like catastrophes in the future has to be a high priority.

  • The New APPS Blog explains how data, by its very nature, is so easily made into a commodity.

  • The NYR Daily considers the future of the humanities in a world where higher education is becoming preoccupied by STEM.

  • Corey S. Powell at Out There interviews Bear Grylls about the making of his new documentary series Hostile Planet.

  • Personal Reflections' Jim Belshaw considers the pleasures of birds and of birdwatching.

  • Jason C. Davis at the Planetary Society Blog noted the arrival of the Beresheet probe in lunar orbit.

  • Drew Rowsome reviews the new amazing-sounding play Angelique at the Factory Theatre.

  • The Russian Demographics Blog notes a paper that makes the point of there being no automatic relationship between greater gender equality and increases in fertility.

  • The Signal looks at how the Library of Congress has made use of the BagIt programming language in its archiving of data.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel comes up with questions to ask plausible visitors from other universes.

  • Strange Company notes the mysterious deaths visited on three members of a British family in the early 20th century. Who was the murderer? Was there even a crime?

  • Towleroad notes the activists, including Canadian-born playwright Jordan Tannahill, who disrupted a high tea at the Dorchester Hotel in London over the homophobic law passed by its owner, the Sultan of Brunei.

  • Window on Eurasia notes rising instability in Ingushetia.

  • Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell notes that the British surveillance of Huawei is revealing the sorts of problems that must be present in scrutiny-less Facebook, too.

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  • Bad Astronomer Phil Plait reports on the massive cloud of material detected around the active galaxy Cygnus A.

  • The Crux suggests our contemporary problems with wisdom teeth represent not a failure of evolution but rather a failure on our post-Neolithic parts to eat hard foods which stimulate the jaw growth capable of supporting wisdom teeth.

  • D-Brief notes how the astronomers involved in a planetary effort to image a black hole are preparing to make an announcement next week.

  • Gizmodo notes how the debris field created in orbit by India testing an anti-satellite weapon threatens the ISS.

  • Joe. My. God. notes that at least some hotels owned by the Sultan of Brunei are deleting their social media profiles following protests over Brunei's violent anti-gay laws.

  • JSTOR Daily considers if, between the drop in fertility that developing China was likely to undergo anyway and the continuing resentments of the Chinese, the one-child policy was worth it.

  • Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money uses a recent New York Times profile to note the sheer influence of Rupert Murdoch worldwide.

  • The Map Room Blog notes a new exhibition, at the shop of a Manhattan rare book dealer, of a collection of vintage maps of New York City from its foundation, sharing some photos, even.

  • Marginal Revolution remarks on the rapid growth of Native American numbers in the United States over the past century.

  • The NYR Daily shares a report from Debbie Bookchin in North Syria arguing that the West needs to help Rojava.

  • Roads and Kingdoms provides some tips for first-time visitors to the capital of Uruguay, Montevideo.

  • The Russian Demographics Blog notes the continuing growth in numbers of dead from HIV infection in Russia, with Siberia being a new hotspot.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel explains how the Event Horizon Telescope project will image a black hole's event horizon, and what questions exist around the project.

  • Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps shares an Anish Kapoor map demonstrating the Brexit divides in the United Kingdom.

  • Daniel Little at Understanding Society considers the study of ethical disasters in capitalism, looking at OxyContin as an example.

  • Window on Eurasia notes continued threats, and continued protests to these threats, surrounding Lake Baikal in Siberia.

  • Arnold Zwicky has fun with a cartoon that plays on a pun between the words chants and chance.

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  • National Geographic reports on the discovery of animals slaughtered by mysterious hominins present in the Philippines some 700 thousand years ago. Who were they?

  • National Geographic notes a new study suggesting that, before the Chixculub impact, the dinosaurs were doing fine as a group of animals, that they were not on the verge of dying out. The dinosaurs simply had bad luck.

  • CityLab notes how the jobs typically filled by women, particularly, are especially vulnerable to roboticization.

  • CBC recently reported from a conference in Las Vegas, where robots demonstrated their ability to fill any number of jobs, displacing human workers.

  • Matt Simon at WIRED wrote about the potential for robot and human workers to co-exist, each with their own strengths.

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